The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign / Why It Exists, and How It May Be Extinguished

by Henry Charles Carey

The man who carries the food adds, as he seems to think, as much to the quantity to be consumed as did the one who ploughed the ground and sowed the seed; and he who stands at the counter measuring cloth adds as much to the quantity of cloth as did he who produced it. No benefit, in his view, results from any saving of the labour of transportation or exchange. He has, therefore, no faith in the advantage to be derived from the local application of labour or capital. He believes that it matters nothing to the farmer of Ireland whether his food be consumed on the farm or at a distance from it—whether his grass be fed on the land or carried to market—whether the manure be returned to the land or wasted on the road—whether, of course, the land be impoverished or enriched. He is even disposed to believe that it is frequently more to the advantage of the people of that country that the food there produced should be divided among the labourers of France or Italy than among themselves.[140]

He believes in the advantage of large manufacturing towns at a distance from those who produce the food and raw materials of manufacture; and that perfect freedom of trade consists in the quiet submission of the farmers and planters of the world to the working of a system which Dr. Smith, regarded as tending so greatly to "the discouragement of agriculture," that it was the main object of his work to teach the people of Britain that it was not more unjust to others than injurious to themselves.

In a work just issued from the press, Mr. McCulloch tells his readers that—

"For the reasons now stated, a village built in the immediate vicinity of a gentleman's seat generally declines on his becoming an absentee. That, however, is in most cases any thing but an injury. The inhabitants of such villages are generally poor, needy dependants, destitute of any invention, and without any wish to distinguish themselves. But when the proprietors are elsewhere, they are forced to trust to their own resources, and either establish some sort of manufacture, or resort to those manufacturing and commercial cities where there is always a ready demand for labourers, and where every latent spark of genius is sure to be elicited. Although, therefore, it be certainly true that absenteeism has a tendency to reduce the villages which are found in the neighbourhood of the residences of extensive proprietors, it is not on that account prejudicial to the country at large, but the reverse."[141]

It is here seen that the people who own large estates are supposed to be surrounded by "poor and needy dependants," who are to be stimulated to exertion by the pressure of want, and that this pressure is to be produced by the absenteeism of the proprietor. We have here the master administering the lash to his poor slave, and the only difference between the English master and the Jamaica one appears to be, that absenteeism in the one case forces the poor labourer to seek the lanes and alleys of a great city, and in the other causes him to be worked to death. The slavery of Ireland, Jamaica, and India is a natural consequence of the absenteeism of the great land-owners; and the larger the properties, the greater must be the tendency to absenteeism, centralization, and slavery; and yet Mr. McCulloch assures his readers that

"The advantage of preserving large estates from being frittered down by a scheme of equal division is not limited to its effects on the younger children of their owners. It raises universally the standard of competence, and gives new force to the springs which set industry in motion. The manner of living in great landlords is that in which every one is ambitious of being able to indulge; and their habits of expense, though somewhat injurious to themselves, act as powerful incentives to the ingenuity and enterprise of other classes, who never think their fortunes sufficiently ample unless they will enable them to emulate the splendour of the richest landlords; so that the custom of primogeniture seems to render all classes more industrious, and to augment at the same time the mass of wealth and the scale of enjoyment."— Principles.

The modern system tends necessarily to the consolidation of land, and the more completely that object can be attained, the greater must, be "the splendour of the richest landlords," the greater the habits of expense among the few, the greater their power to absent themselves, the greater the power of the rapacious middleman or agent, the greater the poverty and squalor of "the poor and needy dependants," and the greater the necessity for seeking shelter in the cellars of Manchester, the wynds of Glasgow, or the brothels of London and Liverpool; but the larger must be the supply of the commodity called "cheap labour." In other words, slaves will be more numerous, and masters will be more able to decide on what shall be the employment of the labourer, and what shall be its reward.

Adam Smith knew nothing of all this. He saw that capital was always best managed by its owner, and therefore had no faith in a universal system of agencies. He saw that the little proprietor was by far the greatest improver, and he had no belief in the advantage of great farmers surrounded by day-labourers. He believed in the advantage of making twelve exchanges in a year in place of one, and he saw clearly that the nearer the consumer could come to the producer the larger and more profitable would be commerce. He therefore taught that the workman should go to the place where, food being abundant, moderate labour would command much food. His successors teach that the food should come to the place where, men being abundant and food scarce, much labour will command little food, and that when population has thus been rendered superabundant, the surplus should go abroad to raise more food for the supply of those they left behind. The one teaches the concentration of man, and the local division of labour. The other, the dispersion of man, and the territorial division of labour. They differ thus in every thing, except that they both use the word free trade—but with reference to totally distinct ideas. With the one, COMMERCE has that enlarged signification which embraces every description of intercourse resulting from the exercise of "man's natural inclination" for association, while with the other TRADE has reference to no idea, beyond that of the mere pedler who buys in the cheapest market and sells in the dearest one. The system of the one is perfectly harmonious, and tends toward peace among men. The other is a mass of discords, tending toward war among the men and the nations of the earth.

As ordinarily used, the word Commerce has scarcely any signification except that of trade with distant men, and yet that is the least profitable commerce that can be maintained,—as the reader may satisfy himself if he will reflect that when the miller and the farmer are near neighbours they divide between them all the flour that is made, whereas, when they are widely separated, a third man, the carrier, intervenes between them and takes a large portion of it, leaving less to be divided between those who raise the wheat and those who convert it into flour. The more perfect the power of association the greater must be the power to maintain commerce, for every act of association is an act of commerce, as it is proposed now to show, beginning at the beginning, in the family, which long precedes the nation. Doing so, we find the husband exchanging his services in the raising of food and the materials of clothing, for those of his wife, employed in the preparation of food for the table, and the conversion of raw materials into clothing,—and here it is we find the greatest of all trades. Of all the labour employed on the farms and in the farm-houses of the Union, we should, could we have an accurate statement, find that the proportion of its products exchanged beyond their own limits, scarcely exceeded one-third, and was certainly far less than one-half, the remainder being given to the raising of food and raw materials for their own consumption, and the conversion of that food and those materials into the forms fitting them for their own uses.

At the next step we find ourselves in the little community, of which the owner of this farm constitutes a portion; and here we find the farmer exchanging his wheat with one neighbour for a day's labour—the use of his wagon and his horse for other days of labour—his potatoes with a third for the shoeing of his horse, and with a fourth for the shoeing of himself and his children, or the making of his coat. On one day he or his family have labour to spare, and they pass it off to a neighbour to be repaid by him in labour on another day. One requires aid in the spring, the other in the autumn; one gives a day's labour in hauling lumber, in exchange for that of another, employed in mining coal or iron ore. Another trades the labour that has been employed in the purchase of a plough for that of his neighbour which had been applied to the purchase of a cradle. Exchanges being thus made on the spot, from hour to hour and from day to day, with little or no intervention of persons whose business is trade, their amount is large, and, combined with those of the family, equals probably four-fifths of the total product of the labour of the community, leaving not more than one-fifth to be traded off with distant men; and this proportion is often greatly diminished as with increasing population and wealth a market is made on the land for the products of the land.